When I think of terrible disasters such as 9/11 or Hurricane Sandy that require a large restoration effort, I assume that the city would do all that it can to make sure people are being cared for and that they have a shelter. For example, During Hurricane Sandy, I remember that Queens College opened the gym as a shelter for people who lost their homes during the storm. Miriam Greenberg, author of “The Disaster Inside the Disaster: Hurricane Sandy and Post-Crisis Redevelopment,” turns my potential misconception on its head. She argues that the reconstruction of neighborhoods and infrastructure depends on how wealthy the neighborhood is. Since the people in the wealthier neighborhoods, such as Lower Manhattan, had strong existing infrastructure and health insurance before Hurricane Sandy, they were redeveloped quickly and had “services like electricity, heat, and hot water back within days and 99 percent of its commercial, residential, hotel, and retail inventory ‘back to business’ within weeks” (Greenberg 49). She contrasts this to places like Coney Island and the South Bronx where it took weeks or months for FEMA to reach and restore basic functions and schools. This is an example of what she calls “crisis driven urbanization” (46), where the wealthy communities get restored much faster than low-income neighborhoods after a disaster.

Though I know that it is “not fair” that rich communities get restored faster than low income neighborhoods, Greenberg fails to expound on why the wealthy communities get restructured first. Part of the reason they get rebuilt much quicker is that their existing infrastructure holds up better and the damage they endure is much easier to rebuild than to start building a whole neighborhood from scratch. If a building is still standing after the storm and it is simply a matter of getting the hot water and electricity back up, then of course that building will be fixed first. I believe that the way the rebuilding following Hurricane Sandy was not discriminating between low income neighborhoods, as Greenberg implies, but that it was done in a practical way that the organizations could do it: by starting on the small projects and moving to the larger ones.

Rebuilding houses and restoring heat and electricity was not all that was on the restoration plan. In Melissa Checker’s “Green is the New Brown: Old School Toxics and Environmental Gentrification on a New York City Waterfront,” Checker talks about how “economic interests are pursued at the expense of environmental safety and public health” (Checker 177). For example, while residents of Staten Island were still without heat and electricity, Mayor Bloomberg decided to hold a meeting on building the largest ferris wheel on Staten Island’s North Shore. I am shocked that this is what could be on someone’s mind during the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy while people still needed somewhere to live. Clearly, Bloomberg did not care for the environment because this ferris wheel was going to be put in place of a giant oil tank that was originally there before the storm. Building the ferris wheel is not surprising, considering the Bloomberg administration was all about economic growth and not the day-to-day lives of residents of Staten Island. However, It was horrific how the people of Coney Island and Staten Island had to wait months and sometimes years for essential functions in their homes like heat and electricity. In “The Flood Next Time” by Jarret Murphy, Murphy writes about how it is crucial to care about the rising levels of water around New York. Even though the water levels are rising, we are not so concerned about building more housing near the shores in order to generate revenue. This ties into how economics is the main idea at play when we should be more concerned with the how the people are holding up.

So was Hurricane Sandy cleanup successful? If you were to ask the Environmental Defense Fund, their answer would be a resounding “yes”(check out the link below). They believe that much of the rebuilding efforts were done quickly and effectively in New York and New Jersey. However, there were many people waiting without electricity and heat for months after the storm that should have been taken care of. We must keep in mind that business and the economy are not always the most important considerations and we should be more worried about the lives of the people. Perhaps with better planning, New York could be better prepared for the next storm and its cleanup and treat lower income people with the same respect as higher income.

Additional Source: https://www.edf.org/sites/default/files/sites/default/files/content/SandySuccessStories_June2013.pdf

I agree with you Mariyanthie, that Amanda Burden focused too much on the aesthetics of New York City and not enough on the people who live there. Her view of a successful city seems to solely rely on economic growth. Based on how she remodeled the Highline, as well as rezoning 125th street to consist of luxury housing, it is safe to assume that Burden was not interested in what the local residents wanted; she had her own motives in mind to remodel in order to bring in revenue in housing and tourists. Her desire for an economically successful city manifested in the way that she “micromanaged” projects, as you mentioned. She was so caught up in the details of how everything should look perfect, that she lost sight of what the people who lived there would like to see and instead focused on the city being aesthetically pleasing.

You mention that Burden was more similar to Robert Moses than to Jane Jacobs. While she was interested in pleasing the wealthy like Moses was, she went about it in a “Jacobsian” manner. She wanted people to live in the city, unlike Moses who built highways for people to leave the city. She also wanted “street vitality” like Jacobs wanted, meaning that there should be people on the streets at all hours. However, her idea of “street vitality” was of white wealthy people on the street similar to herself, and not a diverse group of people. She remodeled the Highline in a way that would raise real estate costs in the nearby areas dramatically, as you portrayed in the table. Overall, I think Burden was similar to Moses mostly in that she was focused on improving the lives of the upper class and similar to Jacobs in that she wanted people to stay in the city and enjoy it.

Though Burden ignored poor people who lived in the city, you are right that she did create a beautiful and enjoyable Highline park. It did generate revenue for the city because of the kiosks and nearby stores and it is a tourist attraction. Her sitting spaces that she created have a Jacobs feel because they encourage interaction of tourists and residents alike. However, Burden should not just be focused on what people like herself would enjoy seeing, but also on what the residents of the city need. Seeing the way that she kicked out the people who disagree with her in the movie shows that she does not have the compassion for all kinds of people living in the city, nor does she have the residents in mind when she plans. You gave some important insights into how Burden runs the city, Mariyanthe.

In “ A Region at Risk: The Third Regional Plan for the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut Metropolitan Area” authors Robert D. Yaro and Tony Hiss discuss the founding of the Regional Plan Association (“RPA”). New York City was growing very fast and there needed to be a way to accommodate everyone. Lewis Mumford thought that instead of promoting growth, efforts should be made to “restrain development and deconcentrate the urban core” (Yaro, Hiss 1)—in other words, stop the growth of the city. However, Thomas Adams, the first planning director of the RPA argued that instead of stopping the growth, it should be accommodated by planning for the future growth of the city.. The goal of the RPA was to plan for the future of the Metropolitan area. Adams turned out to be correct, as evidenced by unsuccessful recent efforts to limit migration and economic development in places like Moscow or Beijing.

Professor Scott Larson in his book Building Like Moses with Jacobs in Mind, notes that one of the ways that the regional planners like Robert Moses promoted his plans is by persuading business leaders and politicians that the city could only be sustained by using his plans. Robert Moses saw himself as a great planner. However, he used “planning…as an exercise in the mechanics of persuasion” (Larson 59). The constant persuasion is called “the narrative of threat,” or planners’ tendency to say their projects are essential to the future and promote fears that the city will fall apart if they don’t follow their projects or if the projects are not built. Lots of the early planners, like Robert Moses, only did planning for part of their job, but more of their job was spent persuading business leaders and politicians that their plans were the best possible plans. I think that while planning was important, if city planners such as Robert Moses and others could have focused more on a wide variety of opinions and taken them into consideration, he could edit his planning and make an even greater city. In addition, instead of spending so much time trying to persuade that his plan was so good, if more of the city planners saw their plans in the large planning of the city, they would be more likely to agree with him and not need persuading.

Jane Jacobs, however, argued that Moses’s version of city planning was destroying the city. “Ultimately, Jacobs was able to counter the Moses narrative with her assertion that it was Moses and other modernist planners meddling with the natural rhythms and designs of neighborhoods who were rendering cities unliveable” (Larson 61). Jane Jacobs’ viewpoint promoted sustainable cities because she wanted everyone to live together in the city. “The third regional plan…at its heart…is a ‘transit plan’ that is regional in scope, making it consistent with Moses, with much in it about city planning and community design that is derived directly from Jacobs” (Larson 70). This is a key point because of the importance of both Moses and Jacobs to the development of New York City.

Scott Campbell from the university of Michigan has postulated the same key factors of equity, environment, and economy, but he sees the intersection as “sustainable development” as compared to Yaro and Hiss’s “quality of life”. Campbell coins the term “planner’s struggle” for the conflicts that he sees amongst the 3 corners of the triangle.  He sees his formulation as the key to bring social equality into the equation. “Planners would benefit both from integrating social theory with environmental thinking and from combining their substantive skills with techniques for community conflict resolution, to confront economic and environmental injustice” (Journal of the American Planning Association).

 

Additional Source: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~sdcamp/Ecoeco/Greencities.html

I enjoyed reading your response, Jalissa. I agree with your points that Jane Jacob’s ideal city is composed of a diverse population with various building structures. She did not agree with “orthodox urbanism,” or the classical teachings of how a successful city is run and thought that this would cause more harm than good in building a city.

I agree with you that many of Jacob’s initiatives are in place today. Like you said, today we have participatory budgeting in many communities where residents can input their views on how the taxpayers’ money should be effectively spent. This seems exactly like what Jacob’s vision was–to have the residents input on what they would like to see happening in their community. She is the one who fostered the participation of the community instead of city planners deciding how a community should best be built and run.

Jane Jacobs thought that “orthodox urbanism” was the wrong way to plan for a successful city because one cannot build a successful city using specific formulas of green-space and types of building because it does not take the population’s ideas into account. On page 15 of the introduction of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jacobs writes about her encounters with residents in East Harlem who hated the lawn because they had no input in making it. It was the city planners who thought it would be good for the people who lived there, so they added it without the input of the residents. The people she talked to proved her point in that building certain spaces will only work if the people living there have a say in what is being built. However, she thinks of her own formula for building a successful city, which is exactly what she was trying to prove is the wrong way to build (Jacobs 150-151). She does not know that the people living in the city necessarily want a diverse city containing different types of buildings until she asks them, and no where in her four points is asking the residents what they want to build in their complex.

Despite Jacobs’ slight inconsistencies, I agree with the points you make, Jalissa, about how Jane Jacob’s would compose a successful city. Many of her ideas are implemented today. She fostered community participation, which we have today and many of the communities within New York City are diverse with varying structures. I can now notice and appreciate varying structures and diversity more than I have in the past thanks to Jane Jacobs.